If I Die Young
by isnotthatstrange
Summary: "If I die young, bury me in satin. Lay me down on a bed of roses. Sink me in the river at dawn. Send me away with the words of a love song. The sharp knife of a short life. I've had just enough time."


_If I die young  
>Bury me in satin<br>Lay me down on a bed of roses  
>Sink me in the river at dawn<br>Send me away with the words of a love song_

Cassandra accepted it numbly. She was practical; she was a realist. There was nothing that she could do about it.

That didn't mean that it didn't hurt. It broke her heart. While her parents talked to the doctor, Cassandra excused herself to the restroom. The mirror showed someone different from the last time she had looked at her reflection.

She wondered if she would have her braces off by the time she died.

Up until that point, Cassandra had been proud of herself. That was the thought that pushed her over the edge. Tears streamed down her face.

She was fifteen years old. There were so many other things she should have been worrying about, not whether or not she would have a mouthful of metal when they lowered her into the ground.

Once her face was dry, she went to join her parents and the doctor again. She was met by the immediate awkward silence that let her know they had just been talking about her. There was no reason to be secretive. It was _her_ life. It was _her_ death.

Cassandra sat down and calmly asked them to share with her what they had been discussing.

_Lord, make me a rainbow  
>I'll shine down on my mother<br>She'll know I'm safe with you when she stands under my colors  
>Life ain't always what you think it ought to be, no<br>Ain't even gray, but she buries her baby_

The same parents that had told her that Santa Claus wasn't real at the age of three suddenly believed everything they came across on the internet. Different experimental remedies came in the mail nearly every day and Cassandra tried them without complaint, but also without hope. There was nothing that some smelly foreign tea or illegally procured, non-FDA approved drug could do for her.

Cassandra sat on the staircase one night, arms wrapped around herself as she listened to her parents discuss mortuary brochures. During the day they tried to be optimistic, but after she went to bed they would weep over planning her funeral.

She didn't have the heart to tell them that she had decided she wanted her body to be donated to science. By letting them decide what would happen to her, she would please them in death, the way she had always strived to please them in life.

_The sharp knife of a short life  
>I've had just enough time<em>

The fall feels slow, like in the movies, and Cassandra knows that this is it. She was going to die taking a history test. Students would tell stories of the girl who had seized violently and then collapsed dead in Mr. Hubert's class. They would fight over who got stuck having to sit in the "Dead Girl Desk".

Before everything went black, Cassandra's tongue ran over the braces that were still in her mouth.

She hadn't died, but when she came home from the hospital her room looked as though she had. The shelves were bare, dusting marking the outlines of where all of her science fair trophies had been. The periodic table poster was missing from her wall, as well as all the quotes from scientists and mathematicians that she had artfully collaged.

Her parents made her drop out of school, saying that it was too stressful on her health. Cassandra didn't want to. School had been the one place where she felt somewhat normal again. No one there knew about the tumor. Well, _now_ they did, after her episode. She cleared out her locker with a heavy heart and followed her parents to the parking lot, wondering if anyone in the school would even miss her.

Two years later, Cassandra sat in the back row at what would have been her graduation, imagining what she would have looked like in her cap and gown. Her doctors had told her that she wouldn't live long enough to see it. She had proven them wrong, but watching all of her old classmates be handed their diplomas made her wish that maybe she hadn't.

_I'll be wearing white when I come into your kingdom  
>I'm as green as the ring on my little cold finger<br>I've never known the loving of a man  
>But it sure felt nice when he was holding my hand<em>

The only experience that she can relate being near Jake to is the slow-motion fall. It was happening and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The way he watched her sometimes reminded her of her parents and she hated it. One day when the math made her dizzy, Jake was by her side in an instant, one arm around her waist and the other reaching for one of her hands. By the look on his face, Cassandra realized that, unlike her parents, he wasn't scared _of_ her; he was scared _for_ her.

She felt that slow-motion feeling whenever he was around and, like her impending cranial doom, she accepted it as something that she could not fix.

_There's a boy here in town  
>Says he'll love me forever<br>Who would have thought forever could be severed by  
>The sharp knife of a short life<br>I've had just enough time_

The first time Jake kisses her, she cries because it's just not fair. He thinks that he's done something wrong and that it just _so_ _Jake_ that it makes her cry even harder.

He tells her that he doesn't want to hide who he really is anymore and who he is is in love with her. Cassandra doesn't feel like she's falling anymore because he holding onto her. She couldn't have been in a better place, but then the falling came back, only this time it has nothing to do with Jake and everything to do with the tumor.

This time, though, instead of gaping classmates, the last thing she sees before the darkness is him.

_So put on your best, boys  
>And I'll wear my pearls<br>What I never did is done_

The doctor tells her that this prognosis is final, _this is the one_, and for the first time, Cassandra is struggling to accept it because now she has so much to lose.

She wishes she could spend her last days anywhere but in a hospital. The atmosphere brings everyone down, no matter how hard they try to hide it.

Flynn brings tulips from Holland for her bedside to cheer the place up, but at night, after the others are gone and Jake is uncomfortably asleep beside her, Cassandra looks at the colorful bulbs and wants to throw the entire vase of them against the wall. For years now, she had dressed in colors as vibrant as those flowers as a personal fight against the darkness of death and the whiteness of hospital rooms, but it had done nothing, just like those tulips would do nothing. They would wither up and die, just like her.

_A penny for my thoughts  
>Oh, no, I'll sell them for a dollar<br>They're worth so much more after I'm a goner  
>And maybe then you'll hear the words I've been singing<br>Funny when you're dead how people start listening_

On their first day in the Library – before Munich, before her betrayal, before everything – she had told them that this tumor was going to kill her one day. Maybe they hadn't believed her, or maybe they had forgotten. Cassandra envied them their ability to do so. Either way, they were all in denial and thought that there was something that could be done. She felt fifteen years old again, listening to them talk about magic the way her parents had talked about mail-order remedies. Like she had done when she was fifteen, Cassandra stayed quiet and let them hold onto the hope that she had lost long ago.

They think she's asleep one night and she overhears Jake offer to help Flynn go find Nicolas Flamel's rumored Elixir of Life and it takes all of her willpower to not open her eyes and yell at them in protest. She can't imagine spending a day in this hell without Jake holding her hand or reading poetry to her while she rests, but she also knows that it's selfish to try to keep him here and let him watch her die. Baird talks them out of it and Cassandra feels a shameful wave of relief crash over her.

_If I die young  
>Bury me in satin<br>Lay me down on a bed of roses  
>Sink me in the river at dawn<br>Send me away with the words of a love song_

It's during one of the rare moments when Jake has been coaxed out of the room that Baird asks her what she wants done with her body. No one had ever actually asked her that before, so Cassandra isn't sure how she should answer.

With shaky fingers, she pulls up a website that tells Baird about biodegradable urns that grow into trees. She wants to be planted outside of the Annex, the place that feels most like home to her.

Baird smiles through the tears running down her face and tells Cassandra that that sounds perfect.

_The ballad of a dove  
>Go with peace and love<br>Gather up your tears  
>Keep them in your pocket<br>Save them for a time when you're really gonna need them_

They try not to cry around her, though she wishes that they would because right now she could try to comfort them. Soon, that won't be an option. Their silence where it's obvious they want to cry is the worst, especially with Ezekiel and Flynn, who can usually never stop talking.

Jake is reading to her one day when halfway through a poem by Tennyson he realizes it's about death and suddenly he's sobbing into her lap. Cassandra wraps herself around his shaking body and weeps for the day that she isn't there for him to lean on.

_The sharp knife of a short life  
>I've had just enough time<em>

Cassandra could tell that this was going to be the day. Judging by the way that all of them, even Charlene and Jenkins, are standing around her bed, they could tell too.

It didn't feel the way she thought it would. She had expected it to be like the slow fall, but it happened so fast. One moment she could feel both of Jake's hands tightly gripping one of hers and the next -

_So put on your best, boys  
>And I'll wear my pearls<em>


End file.
